He certainly rides like he's clean. This year, he attempted a dramatic attack in the mountains of the TdF, but his legs gave out 250m later, and Team Sky caught and powered past him without even getting out of their saddles.

if you follow the general principal that just about everyone was doing it just to keep up with the peloton there seems to be little chance many riders were totally clean. Maybe it will end up being who took less not who took it at all. For me it would be heart breaking if Evans, O'Grady, Mcewen, Voigt, etc took anything.My mother and Aunt are involved in the Pharmaceutical industry in a supporting role for Big company R&D and also developing Lab tests to test the Substance performance. On a recent Skype convo with my Aunt she tells me the there are currently 6 substances (not all performance enhancing) out there that were known to be used in the Olympics and other events this year that are unable to be accurately tested at this stage. She tells me they were widely available through several Specialists in the Sport Sciences and Athlete development areas in Europe and the US. She has no idea of the hows and wheres but the substances were developed as off shoots of recovery and rehab drugs for serious accident victims. Apparently there is huge money out there for rouge development scientists to use their findings or accidental findings. Seems like no matter the sport or the athlete there are still the drugs out there and probably will never go away. I would hate to think a team like Sky who basically shut the race down by using the whole team to ride everyone else into the ground in the TDF were using something that cant be tested for or worse still BMC, Orica Green Edge, etc.

Bill

TdF 2011: as Cadel Evans crosses the finish at Alpe-d’Huez: "I reckon tonight in hindsight he may have won the Tour de France tomorrow." The man Phil Ligget !!!

I think the East German systematic doping regime fell apart when the East did, so if Jens had an assisted start, he's not had the same ongoing 'support'.

philip wrote:Rogers has been named as being at the dodgy training camps too...

Rogers was named as his team being in the same location as USPS (while he was at T-Mobile) a couple of seasons running, not named as a definite doper. That said, he had links to Doc Ferrari, which were severed at team requests. But T-Mobile haven't exactly covered themselves in untainted glory out of all of this, have they?

liamb wrote:I would hate to think a team like Sky who basically shut the race down by using the whole team to ride everyone else into the ground in the TDF were using something that cant be tested for or worse still BMC, Orica Green Edge, etc.

Bill

Certainly hope they weren't... But the whole thing taints the sport badly and all the riders are suspected by the general public. If the Sky team was caught out, it'd destroy the reputation of cycling for a very long time.

I follow the Slipstream Sports team which is supposedly clean - I guess I'd be pretty disappointed if they weren't. They have some in the team who were formerly done for doping, Millar, Vaughters, etc. It was the documentary Blood, Sweat + Gears about that team that initially got me interested in this great sport.

g-boaf wrote:If the Sky team was caught out, it'd destroy the reputation of cycling for a very long time.

I think that's already underway with the USADA dossier - and will be pretty much complete when Contador, who has already had a title stripped, wins the TdF next year.

Oh, and someone needs to remind Sky to make it look like riding the Alps in the TdF is hard work - you know, grimace a little or splash yourself with a bottle to make it look like you're raising a sweat.

There is no testing for blood transfusions. If the red blood cells (which transfusing is supposed to boost) are below a certain level then they will pass the doping tests. Read Tyler hamilton's book for more detail.

Last edited by Ross on Fri Oct 12, 2012 12:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ross wrote:There is no testing for blood transfusions. If the red blood cells (which transfusing is supposed to boost) are below a certain level then they will pass the doping tests. Read Tyler hamilton's book for more detail.

If I understand this article correctly you can test for transfusions because the body stops producing some enzyme / cell when there is too much blood, so they can see if there is a low count in juvenile cells or something like that

liamb wrote:Apparently there is huge money out there for rouge development scientists to use their findings or accidental findings.

So the commies are to blame?

Where there is professional sport or even motorsports, there will be people looking to push the edge all over the world. The will to win, and the pressure to win will make that happen, the huge money is force for that. Ayrton Senna, the infamous but legendary Brazilian racing driver characterised it very well in an interview with Sir Jackie Stewart:

Ayrton Senna da Silva wrote:Being a racing driver means you are racing with other people and if you no longer go for a gap that exists you are no longer a racing driver - because we are competing, we are competing to win and the main motivation to all of us is to compete for a victory. It's not to come third, fourth, fifth or sixth. Right?

For full effect, you need to see the interview itself, with Senna saying that completely seriously, straight-faced and with absolute conviction.

And you'd have to admit, he's right, isn't he? That's the way it is in sports, no prizes for second - people only care about wins. Be it gold medals, TdF wins, or P1 in a motor-race. That's the way it is and it always will be, regardless of how much people try to clean things up, or in motorsports, regulate development.

Ross wrote:There is no testing for blood transfusions. If the red blood cells (which transfusing is supposed to boost) are below a certain level then they will pass the doping tests. Read Tyler hamilton's book for more detail.

happy to be corrected, but a tell tale sign of blood doping is the amount of plasticizers in the blood

G Boaf wrote "That's the way it is in sports, no prizes for second - people only care about wins. Be it gold medals, TdF wins, or P1 in a motor-race. That's the way it is and it always will be, regardless of how much people try to clean things up, or in motorsports, regulate development."

Dunno about that; some very, very determined people are very happy to get a bronze medal as the result of years of training and dedication. Others at Olympic level will train flat out for years despite knowing that because of advancing years etc they are not in the picture for a win, but they still strive to do well. This may depend on the culture of the individual sport and the mentality of the competitor, though.

liamb wrote:if you follow the general principal that just about everyone was doing it just to keep up with the peloton there seems to be little chance many riders were totally clean. Maybe it will end up being who took less not who took it at all. For me it would be heart breaking if Evans, O'Grady, Mcewen, Voigt, etc took anything.Bill

David Millar specifically says that Moncouts and a few others were clean. If I recall correctly, Moncouts gets the most mentions because he was sharing a team with Millar and therefore would discuss doping more. Moncouts was never a GC winner but he did get some pretty good results so (as Millar says) you could win clean sometimes.

Millar also mentions McEwen doing his lid when an EPO-fuelled peleton were driving at ridiculous speeds, yelling out "stop, this is not f*&^g bike racing" etc, which could indicate that he was not involved.

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